Educational Science

Unlike C-3PO's hard, metallic body or the Terminator's living tissue over a metal endoskeleton, robots of the future may be entirely soft-bodied. A new research initiative is aiming to make robots mushier and more like animals in order to improve their flexibility and usefulness in areas ranging from medicine to...

Pest and Virus Cooperate in Global Invasion

A rapidly spreading crop pest is teaming up with a virus to speed up both their invasions across the globe, scientists in China reported today. A variety of the whitefly Bemisia tabaci known as the B biotype is a super-invasive organism, Shu-Sheng Liu, an entomologist at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou,...

Major breakthroughs in science have historically been the province of individuals, not institutes. Galileo and Copernicus, Edison and Einstein, toiling away in lonely labs or pondering the cosmos in private studies. But in recent decades — especially since the Soviet success in launching the Sputnik satellite in 1957 — the...

Photos of Melt: Glaciers Before and After

Agassiz Glacier (1913) (Image credit: 1913 photograph by W. C. Alden (Glacier National Park Archives))BEFORE: Take a look at Agassiz Glacier, in this photograph taken in 1913, near Boulder Pass, Glacier National Park. NEXT IMAGE: Agassiz Glacier (2005) Agassiz Glacier (2005) (Image credit: 2005 photograph by Greg Pederson (USGS))AFTER: Compare...

Abraham Lincoln: The 16th President

Abraham Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most...

Drilling Caused Deadly 'Mud Volcano'

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- A mud volcano that inundated dozens of villages was probably triggered by commercial gas drilling, research published in a respected scientific journal shows, contradicting an Indonesian government minister who insists it was a natural disaster. It is very likely'' that the mud flow on the island...

Happiness: Contagious as the Flu

In a good mood? Your neighbor, her friends and even her friends' friends should thank you – you're likely infecting them with your cheer. Happiness spreads through social networks about as easily as the flu, according to a new study. The researchers analyzed data compiled from nearly 5,000 interconnected people...

How Fishy Technology Could Power the Future

Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of emerging energy technologies — the power of the future. Think like a fish not like a bird, say researchers trying to harvest energy from water currents. Their new fish-inspired power generator can work in slow-moving currents where traditional turbines are less...

Antarctica Has More Species than Galapagos

Islands around the Antarctic Peninsula have more known species than the Galapagos Islands and many temperate and tropical regions, a new inventory at the polar region reveals. A team of 23 scientists from five research institutes, including team members from the British Antarctic Survey, undertook the first comprehensive inventory of...

Nosy Robots Smell Like Moths

Is it possible for a robot to follow a scent? Massimo Vergassola and his colleagues at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France think so. They have derived a new algorithm using a method they call infotaxis that is similar to the strategy employed by moths. The simplest approach to locating...